What 2024's Bright Comet May Reveal About the Age of the Solar System: An Analysis and Critique

Dr Danny Faulkner, Phd Astronomy at

Answers in Genesis 

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has a long orbital period, estimated to be more than 80,000 years.

This means it takes over 80,000 years for the comet to complete one orbit around the Sun. This long orbital period is a key characteristic that makes it a long-period comet.

It's important to remember that this is just an estimate, and the actual orbital period could be even longer. Also, gravitational interactions with planets can alter the comet's orbit over time, so the period might change slightly in the future.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, poised to potentially become a dazzling celestial spectacle in 2024, has ignited excitement among astronomers and stargazers alike. However, an article titled "What 2024's Bright Comet May Reveal About the Age of the Solar System" by Danny Faulkner requires a closer examination, particularly concerning its implications for the age of the solar system and its handling of the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) perspective.

The article accurately highlights the comet's potential to provide insights into the early solar system. Comets, icy remnants from the formation of our planetary system, hold clues about the conditions and materials present during that epoch. By studying their composition and orbital dynamics, scientists can glean valuable information about the solar system's origins and evolution.

However, the article's discussion of the comet's orbital period and its implications for the age of the solar system is where it falls short. While it mentions the comet's long orbital period, it fails to explicitly connect this to the challenge it poses to the YEC viewpoint.

Young Earth Creationism is a religious belief that the universe, including the Earth, is approximately 6,000 years old. This belief is based on an english literal (not Hebrew) interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative in the Bible. YEC proponents often argue that scientific evidence supporting an old universe, such as comet orbits, is flawed or misinterpreted.

Comets with long orbital periods, like C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS 80,000 year orbit, present a significant challenge to the YEC timescale. 

These comets spend most of their time far from the Sun, in the frigid outer reaches of the solar system. Their orbits are often highly elliptical, taking them tens of thousands or even millions of years to complete a single revolution around the Sun.

The existence of such long-period comets implies that the solar system must be far older than the YEC timescale allows. If the solar system were only 6,000 years old, these comets would have had insufficient time to reach their current positions and establish their observed orbits.

The article's failure to explicitly address this challenge to the YEC viewpoint is a significant oversight. By not highlighting the contradiction between the existence of long-period comets and the YEC timescale, the article misses an opportunity to educate readers about the scientific evidence supporting an old universe.

Furthermore, the article's discussion of the comet's orbital evolution could be expanded to provide a more comprehensive picture of the challenges faced by YEC. The article mentions that the comet's orbit can be perturbed by the gravitational influence of planets, but it does not delve into the implications of this for the long-term stability of cometary orbits.

Over billions of years, the cumulative effect of these gravitational perturbations can significantly alter a comet's orbit, potentially even ejecting it from the solar system altogether. This process suggests that the population of long-period comets we observe today must be constantly replenished, either from a distant reservoir of icy bodies like the Oort cloud or through capture from interstellar space.

The article could have explored these concepts in more detail, explaining how the observed distribution of cometary orbits and their dynamical evolution provide further evidence for an old solar system.

In conclusion, while the article "What 2024's Bright Comet May Reveal About the Age of the Solar System" offers a basic introduction to the comet and its potential scientific significance, it falls short in its discussion of the age of the solar system. 

Danny Faulkner knows full well the astronomical data points to a 80,000 orbit of C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS but he knowing leaves this out of his article. This amounts to “willful ignorance.” 

By not explicitly addressing the challenge posed by long-period comets to the YEC viewpoint and by not delving into the complexities of cometary orbital evolution, the article misses an opportunity to provide a more comprehensive and scientifically accurate account of the topic.